Flames play cooler in 3-1 win over Vegas Markstrom makes 31 saves in win

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On The Strip, the visiting Calgary Flames scored twice in the opening stanza to take control of the their match with the Golden Knights and eased past Vegas for a 3-1 win on Saturday night.

Blake Coleman opened the scoring at 11:06 of the opening stanza for a 1-0 lead to Calgary.

“We have guys stepping up playing really good hockey,” Coleman said. “We got everybody going, which is good. That’s the way we’ve got to play. … Everyone’s been in good spirits, and the confidence is growing higher and higher.”

Nazem Kadri scored two minuted later for a 2-0  advantage.

“What I saw [on the two goals] was guys getting outwilled in front of the net,” Vegas coach Bruce Cassidy said. “They’re just pucks that got pushed into the middle of net. You’ve got to be positionally sound as a goaltender, and you need to outwill people to win those puck battles if he’s making the first save and still recovering. That was the issue with the first two. They were just heavier in front of our net.”

Jacob Markstrom made 31 saves in the win.

“That’s the guy [Markstrom] is; he’s ultra-competitive,” Coleman said. “He’s bare-handed trying to make a glove save with five seconds left on the clock. Not what we want to see. We want him to keep his hand and keep playing for us. But it speaks to the kind of guy he is. He’s a big reason why we won the game.”

Calgary moved to 20-18-5.

“It wasn’t a picture-perfect game for us by any means,” Flames coach Ryan Huska said. “This is not an easy place to win games, even with some of the guys they were missing form their lineup. Scoring early helped us. Unfortunately we had to ride ‘Marky,’ but fortunately he was awesome tonight.”

Vegas dropped to 24-13-5.

“You don’t want to lose hockey games; it’s frustrating,” the Golden Knights’  Zach Whitecloud said. “You’re not going to sit there and tell yourself the good reasons why you lost or the things you could have done better. You’ve got to look at those no matter if you win or lose. Taking with that, we did some good things, obviously, but you can’t sit here and pat yourself on the back and tell yourself that you played good enough to win.”

Mikael Backlund  scored at 17:09 of the middle frame to extend the Flames advantage to 3-0.

Chandler Stephenson broke up the shut out bid with a marker at 8:54 of the third period  to pull Vegas within 3-1.

“We’re trying to score goals,” Cassidy said. “We just didn’t finish well enough.

Logan Thompson made 23 saves in the loss.